Thousands of hungry and scared Syrian refugees enter Iraq

Faced with brutal violence and soaring prices, thousands of Syrian Kurds have poured into Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, seeking respite from privation and fighting between Kurdish fighters and jihadists.

The sudden influx of Syrians across the border, the vast majority of them women, children or elderly, has forced the UN refugee agency to scramble aid to the region.

They are being housed at a camp on the outskirts of the Kurdish regional capital Arbil that is still under construction and lacks many basic services.

But for many, it provides a welcome respite from the fighting ravaging their home districts in a deadly spin-off from the Syrian civil war.’

Government forces pulled out of most Kurdish-majority areas of northern and northeastern Syria last year, leaving Kurdish groups to run their own affairs.

But Al-Qaeda loyalists, who have played a significant role in the rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, see the region as a vital link to fellow jihadists in Iraq and have been locked in deadly fighting with Kurdish militia in recent months.

The UN says between 5,000 and 7,000 refugees crossed into Iraq in the latest influx, but Kurdish officials put the number at around 15,000, with more expected to follow.

“There was war and looting and problems,” said Abdulkarim Brendar, who trekked with his five children to Iraqi Kurdistan. “We did not find a morsel (of food), so, with our children, we came here.”

The plight of civilians like Brendar and his family prompted Iraqi Kurdistan’s regional president Massud Barzani to threaten earlier this month to intervene to protect Syrian Kurds, the latest sign of the conflict’s growing cross-border impact.

“We fled because there is war, beheadings and killings, and in addition to that there is no work,” said Fadhel Abdullah, who crossed into Iraq from the Kurdish-majority Qamishli district of northeastern Syria.

Syrian war refugees’ access to Iraq has been erratic, with local political tensions and fears of a spillover of the conflict leading Kurdistan region authorities to shut the border in May.

Some restrictions were eased last month to allow Syrians to join family members already in Iraq, but the number allowed to cross the border had remained relatively low.

All told, more than 1.9 million Syrians have fled their homeland, with most seeking a haven in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.

Iraq hosts nearly 155,000 registered Syrian refugees, most of them Kurds, according to the United Nations.

“The Kurdistan region has received large numbers of those refugees but it should be an international and Iraqi concern,” said Dindar Zebari, the deputy chief of the Iraqi Kurdish foreign affairs department.

Zebari said the Kurdish region had allocated an additional $20 million to its budget for Syrian Kurdish refugees, but would require further help from the UN and Iraq’s federal government.

For now, mobile medical teams are carrying out basic medical checks on those who have crossed, with a dozen so far referred to hospitals for diarrhoea and vomiting as a result of the heat.

With refugee numbers threatening to overwhelm the capacity of the existing camp at Quru Gusik, some 20 kilometres (12 miles) west of Arbil, Iraqi Kurdish officials plan to transfer some of them to neighbouring Sulaimaniyah province.

But with the fighting showing no sign of let-up, the number of civilians wanting to cross the border is unlikely to relent.

“There was a shortage of food in the market, and everything became expensive, from bread to gas canisters, and unemployment was spreading,” said Ahmed Karim, whose wife held their three-week-old baby in her arms outside a tent in Quru Gusik.